Defiance

I'm late writing today's post because I have been watching Defiance with Daniel Craig in the lead role. This film is based on the true story of the Bielski brothers who helped many Jews survive in Belorussia in the Second World War. It is a very uplifting and moving film, showing how people come together in adversity and faith to live in the forest for 3 years. I will definitely watch this film again to pick up on all the nuances and details missed in my first viewing.

Another of my favourite films is The Pianist, another true story of how a Jewish pianist survived in Poland during the war, and the people who helped him, including a German army officer. I read the book written by the pianist on which the film is based. Apart from a couple of small changes, the film depicts the events very well as they happened.

Weaving Guild, Pot Luck, and Music-making

The Border Weavers met today in the home of one of the members for our delayed Christmas pot-luck lunch. This had been postponed in December due to an ice storm. We also checked out each others weaving books and magazines for inspiration and information.

The Border Weavers Guild was formed by a group of nine ladies who were members of a knitting circle. After several meetings where woven items were shown as well as knitted items, it was suggested that those interested in weaving could form a weaving group. And so that is what we did.

Weaving is one of those activities that needs lots of different skills, from maths to colour design. And it requires attention to detail when warping a loom or following treadling orders. most of the members have a tapestry loom, made by the husband of our oldest member. Most of us have tried some tapestry weaving, albeit simple, and one lady made herself a poncho on her tapestry loom. I must give that a try. Several members have floor looms and make the most wonderful woven items - scarves, towels, shawls, wall-hangings, rugs. Everything is just so beautiful.

The pot luck was fabulous with cream of broccoli soup, chicken wings, coleslaw, home-made breads and muffins, pear and pecan crisp, brownies, key lime pie and my pumpkin cheesecake. I just love the way so many meetings and get-togethers are around pot lucks over here. Not something I had ever done in England, but I am definitely going to start whenever I am back there visiting family or working.

I drove to the weaving meeting today and had to stop on the road to let a gaggle of around a dozen wild turkeys cross the road. It was a great sight – they are big birds and looked at me as they crossed in front of the car. Of course I didn’t have a camera with me! The roads are very slippy with ice and snow on them. I enjoy driving in this weather for some strange reason. It’s been about -10 all day and is going down to -20 tonight.

After the meeting I went back to the house of my violin playing friend so we could spend a couple of hours playing together. I had taken my cello into the meeting with me as it was too cold to leave it in the car. We played some fiddle tunes that I had copied and written in the bass clef - they sounded good played on the two instruments. Than we did some Handel and Bach pieces that we like before finishing with some show tunes.

This is the best therapy I know. Music lets me leave all cares behind, yet brings emotion into my life. It is so much fun to play with others - we laugh a lot, especially when things don't sound so good! Time to go home came too quickly, so I set off along dark, lonely roads with Yo-Yo Ma and Claude Bolling keeping me company with their wonderful jazz. One day I'll sound like that. One day.....

Dancing Fire and Cheesecake

It has been a snowy, damp day today. After feeding the woodstove, I sat and watched the flames. There were several that appeared to be dancing above the logs. They flicked on and off like fireflies, floating over the logs without touching any of them. It was mesmerising. Turning, I could see the snow falling outside. Another mesmerising occurrence that allows my mind to wander into realms of fantasy.

Reality calls me back to the kitchen. I made the pumpkin cheesecake today. There was so much pumpkin that I prepared yesterday. Too much for the recipe I followed. I made two cheesecakes - very easy recipe. One of the ladies at the pot luck tomorrow can't eat wheat, so I've made her a small pot of cheesecake without the crumb base. I made two pumpkin breads as well, and froze two packs of mashed pumpkin, each holding two cups worth. After having chicken soup for tea, I tried a tiny slice of cheesecake. UMMM. It's so delicious - I had to refrain from having more, even though I was full up. So I am happy to take my offering tomorrow.

Cooking pumpkin

I slept so well last night - warm, comfortable and really dark in the bedroom, which is how I like it. Got woken up by the phone ringing at 7:30 - it was a wrong number! Snuggled down again and listened to the radio for a bit after doing my morning meditation. It's been one of those days - snowing and dark - when there's not much incentive to do anything. I did sort out my clothes, throwing away a couple of bags full of old, holey and worn things. Then I decided to cook a pumpkin I had been given before Christmas.

This is a pie pumpkin. I found a recipe online for pumpkin cheesecake which I will make tomorrow for a pot luck lunch on Friday. So I took out the seeds for roasting, scraped away all the stringy bits and put the pumpkin to steam. It needed an hour and a half on my stove before it was cooked. Now it's all mashed up and ready making into cheesecake.

As I come from England, I haven't had much to do with pumpkins, or any other squash, before. I found the taste of pumpkin pie to be quite strange at first, but with the excellent cooks I know around here, I have got used to it now, and have been known to have more than one piece. One of my friends makes her pie with molasses and honey. Now that is scrummy. So I'll use some of the cooked pumpkin to make a pie. But I'm keen to try the cheesecake recipe and will make two so I have one for home. More to follow on the success or otherwise!

New bedroom tonight and friends

At last I can sleep in my newly insulated, sheetrocked, painted and papered bedroom. All the furniture was moved in this morning from a cold and miserable looking undone room. So I keep clock watching to see if it's time for bed yet. Having spent many winters sleeping in the main room on a futon bed it will be such a treat to sleep in a real bed, and know that if my husband does want to stay on the internet half the night, I will not be disturbed. Bliss!

One of my best friends came by today. I have been in England (my home country) working for the last 2 years so have only seen my friend once when I was visiting last year. She is currently living and running a small retail shop in a coastal town, roughly two and a half hours drive from here. So it was a surprise to find her at the door this afternoon, hubby in tow, and with a new dog. She already has an older dog and here she has a young and oh so friendly spaniel. She was very impressed with all the work that has been done in the house and with how warm it is in here. We remembered shivering near the wood stove on previous occasions, trying to play our instruments with cold fingers. She is a violinist, as is my other best friend who lives locally.

There was a time before I went back to England when we had a string quartet. Both my best friends on violins, an ex-music teacher and multi-instrument player on the viola and myself on cello. We would meet every Monday evening to play for up to 3 hours. We laughed and cried, stamped our feet, talked, and played, played, played. It was our weekly therapy night and I miss that a lot. One of the casualties of us moving apart physically. So any opportunity any of us have to play together, we take it. I'll write more about music making in another posting.

So, back to new bedrooms. I have new flannel sheets and pillow cases, plus a new duvet cover all soft and warm waiting for me upstairs. Goodnight all!

Bread and wallpaper

So what's the connection between bread and wallpaper? Just that they are both things I did today - baked bread and hung wallpaper. I've often heard people say that they don't have tine to make their own bread. My response is that the actual time spent on bread-making is quite small. If someone can watch TV for several hours in the evening, then they can also make bread. Although these days there are a lot of electric bread-makers around, I'm not sure the resulting loaf is the same as one made by hand.

But that's by the by. I made four loaves using a combination of stone-ground wholemeal flour, spelt flour, unbleached flour, buckwheat flour, and rice flour. For good measure I threw in a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds and some ground flax seed. The loaves came out so good - two slices keep me going for a long time!

My husband and I have been renovating a 1920 Dutch Colonial in Eastern Maine for the last 6 years. We bought wallpaper for the bedrooms and main living room soon after moving in, expecting to be decorating quite quickly. Little did we realise what we had taken on, and I shall be telling some tale about that in future postings. Suffice it to say that we are extremely happy to have just finished wallpapering the first two rooms today.

Making bread and wallpapering are both satisfying for my soul. They both require a certain amount of dedication and skill to accomplish good results, and both give a feeling of achievement when finished.

Roll on tomorrow when we get to move into the bedroom, after having some excellent toast for breakfast, of course.

New Year - Is this time to start a journal?

Keeping a journal has long been one of those 'one day I'll do that' items on my list. Having access to a blog page makes me wonder if now is the time to start. After all, it is not necessary to write every day, especially when it seems as though nothing much is happening from one day to the next. But is this a truth? Can I really say that nothing happens during the course of any day? As some one who has long professed to being a non-writer, perhaps I deliberately ignore happenings so I don't have anything to write about.

So, this then is my New Year Resolution number 1. To find something in each day that I will write about, no matter how small, or how little I write. But hang on a minute I say to myself. This is the 4th of January - what happened to the first 3 days of the year? My answer is that I allowed myself those days to ponder the sense and feasibility of setting myself this challenge given my normal reaction to any mention of writing - run and let someone else do it.

Since taking a course in Neuro-Linguistic Programming I have realised that my long-held belief that I am no good at writing stems from a buried memory of a school teacher slamming my workbook on the desk and telling me that what I had written was a load of rubbish! What a disasterous thing to tell a young child. I have spent most of my life since then avoiding as much as possible anything that involves writing. Now I am aware of the reason for my reticence I can work on reversing the limiting belief, and this blog is the start of my awakening ability.

So I will set myself the challenge to write evey day on here for this year. I allow myself to miss an occasional day when travelling, as long as I have recorded the missed day and reasons in the previous days post.Let the challenge begin!